Tag Archives: Nuclear War

Nuclear war, the exchange of nuclear weapons between two or more states in open conflict. It’s unthinkable. It can’t happen.

Right?

Wrong.

Of course, nuclear war is extremely unlikely. Although the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has placed the hands of its famous clock at five minutes to midnight, that doesn’t mean very much and never has. The fact of the matter is that world nuclear inventories, led by reductions in the United States and Russia, have never been lower, and none of the major powers expects a nuclear conflict in the way they did during the Cold War. To crib a line from Captain Jack Sparrow, however, nuclear war is not impossible, it’s improbable, and a nuclear war could take place in more ways than you might think, sparked by any number of occurrences from a pure accident to an intentional strike.

The worst-case scenario is incredibly unlikely. It is also too terrible to be ignored.

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I have sometimes imagined the aftermath of a full nuclear attack in my own hometown. I can see thousands of the wretched living walking north through town, coming up from the middle of the county. Most of the people are quiet, but some of them are wailing. Nearly all of them will be dead within days, depending on the wind. I think about what decisions I would make, knowing that the food I have is spoiling, that I need to move to survive, that even if civil order is maintained somewhere (Canada?) for now, nobody has an obligation or capacity to take us in, and that such order has little chance of surviving for long when nearly the entire continent’s food supply and internal trading routes have been destroyed. Starvation, murder, radiation poisoning, the new realities.

I know that I am probably only drifting into these dark places because when I was young and impressionable, I watched a VHS copy of the extremely upsetting TV movie The Day After.

Unlikely as it is, considering the nightmare scenario is sobering. It gives a certain clarity. In the face of that nuclear terror, frankly, I don’t give a rip about the territorial integrity of Ukraine, or our NATO allies. Weighed against the scenario where my family looks at me helplessly as we realize we’re all going to die miserably and everyone we know will too, I’d accept just about any breach of international norms. I guess I’m just selfish that way.

The People’s Liberation Army could be defeated in a potential nuclear war between China and the United States in just one hour, according to the Moscow-based Expert magazine.

Military experts around the world have claimed that the United States should not underestimate the nuclear capability of the Second Artillery Corps, China’s strategic missile force. The magazine said however that many of the technologies used by the PLA today come from the former Soviet Union. The report added that China’s most advanced technology still comes from nuclear experts from Russia and Ukraine who defected after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

China has yet to build a three-pronged nuclear capability that could challenge the United States, consisting of strategic bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The Second Artillery Corps is also unable to compete against the US in the number of nuclear warheads it has, the report said, adding that China would likely lose a full scale nuclear war in less than an hour.

This assumes that China does not join Russia in a fight against the US. It also assumes that current intelligence on China’s nuclear arsenal is correct. Could China be hiding something? It might be given that the reported growth in its nuclear arsenal is substantially inconsistent with the growth in the rest of its military. Since we don’t know a lot, a prudent decision would be to assume that its nuclear arsenal has grown consistently with the size of its military. Meaning that it might take longer than an hour, and how many cities will the US lose before China is defeated?

In this post I just pour out my thoughts on anything that comes to my mind. The first thing that comes to my mind is the prospect of nuclear war. When is it going to happen?

First, there are rules for everything. In this case we must treat the prospect of nuclear war just like a forest that is ready to burn down. Just because it is ready does not mean it will burn down immediately. One must wait for the right conditions. For example, summer might be the best time for a major forest fire.

The overall conditions exist for a major war between the US, China and/or Russia. Nobody is worried about it because everyone knows that a nuclear attack on the US is impossible. It would mean death for the other-side, so they would never do it.

Let me tell you a little story about AIG. The director of the Credit Default Swap department (the department that blew up AIG) said the premium for his default swaps was like free money. Calculations showed that it would be impossible for the default swaps he was selling to blow up. Yet blow up they did. Maybe he didn’t understand something.

Anyway, today no one is worried about a nuclear war because of the US retaliation. Well, let me tell you something. Leaders are worried about themselves. And if they can survive then that might be all that is needed. Obviously, not just them, but the military and a few million citizens might be all they need if they can finish off the other side. And that is where the US finds itself today.

The US can retaliate one time, then it has nothing and it is finished. The important people on the other side will survive and retain the ability to launch one additional nuclear attack.

There is going to be an event that happens that causes China and/or Russia to plan for a nuclear attack. We are now waiting for that event. The possibilities surround the Senkaku Islands and Israel. If something serious happens then start worrying.

Generally, I expect things to play out before 2025. Starting in the summer of 2011 I started worrying about an event that would act as a catalyst for a great-power war. Nothing happened in 2011. Then it moved to the summer of 2012. Again, nothing happened. We are now in the summer of 2013. I don’t really expect anything big to happen. It is the summer of 2014 and spring of 2015 that has me worried.

It seems that all trends pointing toward a great-power war are getting worse. I am seeing more and more articles written about a China-US war possibility. Putin is becoming more and more like Stalin, or at least more dangerous. The Middle East is about ready to blow up and somehow suck in Israel. China’s aggression in the South China Sea and East China Sea is getting worse.

I’m looking to 2014 and 2015 because of Bible prophecy: Comet ISON, blood moons, sabbath year (2014) and Jubilee year (2015).

If nothing happens in 2014 and 2015 then we have to keep watching until either something big happens or the trends start going in a different direction.

Changing topics

A few months ago I told you about some legal problems that I was having concerning a contract renewal. It’s been about 4 months since the end of the contract and I haven’t heard or seen anything. I found out that the guy was convicted of sexually assaulting two female students a few years ago. He got fired from a national coaching job. Then he got fired from a prominent school when it found out. Finally, he started his own school. Also, he has been playing contract games with other people too.

I really don’t think I will be hearing about his issue again. So I believe it’s over. If not, then I will reveal everything I know to the judge.

Changing topics

Since I am a mathematician, you are getting a different prospective on world events. I tend not to be hung up on emotions that say nuclear war is impossible. In 2003 when the first thought of nuclear war entered my mind, it never occurred to me that it was not possible. Only that the right conditions must be present, like they are now. As I warned people about trouble I noticed that it was not registering in their mind. It was as if I hadn’t said anything.

I studied Bible prophecy and started warning pastors and church members, but it was not registering. Nobody was really prepared to think about why trouble was coming.

Now that it is about 10 years later, and big trouble has still not arrived, one can get a little burnt out. So I tend to think in terms of trends and the accumulation of things, and less about something big. We are trending in the direction of something big. I don’t know when it will happen. I think it might be 2014 and 2015, but who knows.

If I am wrong about a great-power war involving the US, China and/or Russia, then it doesn’t matter. Once Iran gets a nuclear arsenal then all bets are off. The concept of MAD does not apply to Iran. Probably before 2025 I will have to start a nuclear war watch for Iran.

Changing topics

Why no comments on this blog? I shut down the comments section because of trolls. People who systematically set out to undermine this blog. Disagreement is fine, but systematically trying to undermine this blog is a problem. Also, I just don’t have time to debate liberals and think it is pointless. If I look into the sky and you say that is down, then that is a pretty big problem. Should I waste my time trying to argue otherwise? Liberals flip the world upside-down. Arguing is pointless unless you like to argue.

I am a hardcore conservative. So this blog reflect my biases. Generally, I think modern liberalism is like AIDS. It won’t kill you directly, but it will make it possible for other things to get you. That is a violation of rule #1: If I am dead then nothing else matters. That means keeping me (and my family too) alive and well is the number one objective. Modern liberalism heavily interferes with that objective. They want to gut our nuclear arsenal and take away our guns. In my mind something is deeply wrong about this. The world has been flipped upside-down to the point where now I am in danger. And that’s a problem.

One way to survive is to be off the radar screen by moving to another country. Easier said than done, unfortunately. It’s not like countries are flinging open their doors. And what if you can’t get a job in another country?

My family has been living in Switzerland over two years now. We are still working on language issues by using tutors and studying German. Obviously, we are a lot better at speaking German than when we first got here, but it still takes effort. This whole transition thing has not been easy. Although, it helps if failure is not an option. If you can’t fail then you won’t. You will find a way to make it work. Going back to the US was not an option for me. Therefore, failure was not an option.

My youngest son, who is in kindergarten, is pretty fluent in German. My other son understands, but is slow in speaking. Currently, he gets 4 hours of tutoring a week over Skype. My wife and I are studying too.

Switzerland is like the US should be. It has strong states and a weak federal government. Most income tax is paid to the states. The states call most of the shots. So I like the governing structure of Switzerland.

Tina Turner lives right across the lake from me. She just became a Swiss citizen and got married too. Photographers used drones to get pictures of her wedding at her mansion.

Changing topics

I hope you find the material I post interesting. Hopefully, I am wrong about everything, and we can ignore this nasty stuff about nuclear war.

Enter NUKEMAP 3D, what Wellerstein is billing as “The Next Generation of Do-It-Yourself Nuclear War.”

Once up and running late this week at NuclearSecrecy.com, the new version will introduce three-dimensional city modeling, radioactive fall-out patterns that can be shifted with virtual winds and — get this — casualty estimates for the dead and injured, all at the click of a mouse.

The new ticker shows that hundreds of thousands of deaths could be expected even from a typical-size nuclear bomb detonated in a rural area — for example, the site of a tank-manufacturing plant or a nuclear complex facility, where one might think population losses would be minimal.

“So, suddenly now, that little tiny bomb that the North Koreans made suddenly looks like actually a pretty bad deal,” Wellerstein said. “You can also turn on a little button here … called ‘humanitarian impact,’ where it will calculate, along with the fatalities, how many hospitals, fire stations, schools and religious institutions you destroy.”

He said the software is intended to “educate” without offering information about locations or potential casualties that a would-be terrorist or adversary nation could not easily find elsewhere.

Intelligence agencies in China and Russia gained access to highly classified U.S. intelligence and military information contained on electronic media held by renegade former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden, according to U.S. officials.

The exact compromise of the secret data held on Snowden’s laptop computers remains unknown but is the subject of an ongoing damage assessment within NSA and other intelligence agencies, said officials familiar with the case.

One of the biggest fears about the compromise is whether Snowden, an NSA contractor and former CIA technician who hacked into classified intelligence networks, gained access to new U.S. nuclear war plans, the officials said.

In his speech, the president argued that such cuts would be consistent with the goal of maintaining “a strong and credible strategic deterrent,” but this argument rests on a contested theory about how nuclear deterrence works. The Obama administration, and many scholars and experts, believe that a secure, second-strike capability is sufficient for deterrence and that anything more is “overkill.” Therefore, they believe that nuclear warheads in excess of a “minimum deterrent” threshold can be cut with very little loss to our national security.

However, there are those who argue that maintaining a nuclear advantage over one’s opponents enhances deterrence. As Paul Nitze argued during the Cold War, it is of “the utmost importance that the West maintain a sufficient margin of superior capability…. The greater the margin (and the more clearly the Communists understand that we have a margin), the less likely it is that nuclear war will ever occur.”

Start thinking the unthinkable. We as a nation have to start talking about the prospects for nuclear war.

President Barack Obama says Iran might have a bomb in a year. To hold back the day, the United States and Israel have conducted cyberwar, and Israel apparently has assassinated Iranian scientists. Even if Israel attacks to stop Iran’s bomb making now, however, the day will dawn.

What will we do if Israel threatens Tehran with nuclear obliteration? What if North Korea aims a warhead at Seoul? And what if the missiles start flying?

Two dozen North Korean nuclear weapons fired at Seoul and Toyko could kill more people than all the Allied bombings of Germany and Japan in World War II. A nuclear battle in the Middle East, one-sided or not, would be the most destabilizing military event since Pearl Harbor.

Few American military and political leaders have thought seriously about nuclear strategy since the end of the Cold War. No president has had a serious talk with the nation about the world’s nuclear arsenal since Ronald Reagan took a long hard look into the abyss 30 years ago.

China’s overall strategy concerning the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands is to just claim that the Islands have been China’s all along. It’s completely confused why Japan even has the slightest hint that these Islands might belong to Japan. But in reality it’s really just island seizure by stealth – hope Japan won’t notice. This is also known as an act of war.

To back up this act of war on China’s part, the Chinese military is threatening Japan. Either cease activities around the island or else. The “or else” part comes with an implied threat: China has the willingness and means to force you (Japan) out of those islands.

Chinese military on Tuesday asked Japan to “stop activities” around the contested islands in the East China Sea, warning that Beijing has the “capability and determination” to safeguard its territorial sovereignty.

Asserting that the disputed islands, which China calls Diaoyu and Japan refers as Senkakus, are inherent territories, Chinese Defence Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun told reporters that “what is important now is for Japan to stop activities that undermine China’s territorial sovereignty and take actions to ensure the issue resolved”.

“The Chinese government and the armed forces are capable and determined to safeguard the sovereignty of the islands,” Yang said while replying to a question about China stepping up patrols in the island waters since last year challenging the Japanese authority over them.

At this point it appears that China’s leadership doesn’t really care if this leads to nuclear war. Currently, that is precisely where things are headed. If both sides won’t back-down, then one day things are going to rapidly escalate until they blow up. And that day is probably sooner rather than later.

Where is the American administration during all of this? Sleeping? Why isn’t it preparing for nuclear war?

A US military strategy being mapped out to deal with the growing power of China in the western Pacific – a plan that would inevitably ensnare Australia – could escalate into a nuclear war, experts warn.

In a new paper the Australian Strategic Policy Institute says the fashionable ”AirSea Battle” concept – which Washington strategists are developing to keep the US grip on its sea and air power near the Chinese mainland – contains ”uncertainties and potential shortfalls” that could heighten the nuclear risk.

The paper, written by the institute’s senior analyst for defence strategy, Benjamin Schreer, urges the Australian government to keep a cautious distance from the plan for now. Australia would probably play a role in the strategy, particularly with US Marines in Darwin.

The AirSea Battle plan assumes any conflict between the US and China – most likely over Taiwan or Chinese skirmishing with Japan – would remain below the level of nuclear strikes.